


maybe all this is the party (maybe we just do it violently)

by nightbloods



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 1x15, Emotions, Episode Tag, F/M, Missing Scene, felicity has a mild panic attack, so so many emotions, they're just just soft and quietly pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 21:59:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13984173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloods/pseuds/nightbloods
Summary: The collar could have exploded. If the night had gone any differently, she would be a mangled corpse in a body bag. She wouldn’t have been the first on Nelson’s kill list, hardly anything more than someone else who got in his way./a tag for 1.15 (dodger). oliver drives felicity home and she comes to terms with some of the events of the night.





	maybe all this is the party (maybe we just do it violently)

**Author's Note:**

> this is for elle (midwestwind), who is incredibly encouraging and wonderful and responsible for sparking this idea. go check out her page and read everything, she is above and beyond amazing. 
> 
> this tag is canon-compliant in that it goes along with the comment that was made at some point about oliver, john, and felicity going out for drinks after everything with the dodger. it doesn't fit exactly with the episode in that oliver definitely met up with mckenna in the end of the episode instead. but mckenna is a beautiful lesbian who deserves to spend her time on better things, so for the sake of this piece, oliver never met up with her that night.
> 
> title is from lorde's liablity reprise.

By the time the police showed up  on the other side of town to arrest Norton and the badges sent to the fundraiser finished taking her statement, most everyone at the event had cleared out. It was Diggle who pointed out that the bar at the event hall was still open and, giddy from the adrenaline, Felicity couldn’t bring herself to refuse a few drinks. Eventually, it was also Diggle that was the first to leave. Oliver had easily offered to drive her home. 

 

Now, in the car with Oliver, her body is buzzing with from more than the scant amount of alcohol. Knowing that the Dodger is behind bars and she helped to put him there, that’s the high she’s been riding. 

 

Idly, she wonders if that’s something she’ll get used to; being a part of something that saves lives. She wonders if it’s something that Oliver could get used to; something more than putting arrows through a few one percenters. 

 

The car is quiet, nothing but the low buzz of the radio filling the space.  The haze of faded adrenaline drags her mind away, too tired to not let the darkness around her fade together, too tired to notice when her eyes slip closed.  

 

It isn’t until the car stops moving that Felicity is aware of how tensely she’s begun to hold her own body. Her fingers are curled tightly enough into her fists that her clipped nails are biting into her palm. They have been for some time, long enough that she hardly feels the sting of it anymore. As much as she wills her hands to relax, her body doesn’t seem interested in playing along. 

 

If the darkness was comfortable a moment ago, now it’s suffocating her. It’s been hours since the collar snapped open from around her neck, but the memory of its weight on her throat is too clear, too present. Where she had felt proud and unstoppable before, she’s left feeling shaken and claustrophobic in her own skin. 

 

The collar could have exploded. If the night had gone any differently, she would be a mangled corpse in a body bag. She wouldn’t have been the first on Nelson’s kill list, hardly anything more than someone else who got in his way. 

 

“We’re here, Felicity,” Oliver says from beside her. His voice is soft, like maybe he thinks she’s fallen asleep. The tone sounds strange coming from him, out of place when paired with the uncaring, rough exterior he tries so hard to keep up. 

 

The entire night crashes into her in one sudden, solid wave. Earlier, when the explosive collar was disarmed, the relief had nearly knocked the breath out of her. It was a hell of a drug, coming so close to death and walking away unscathed like that. 

 

This is the other side of the coin, she supposes. The storm after the calm of victory. It hits her like a blow to the gut and she can’t breathe, can’t move under the weight of it. 

 

Her chest tightens, panic causing her breath to come short and fast. In the nearly eerie stillness of the car, she feels hopelessly trapped in her own body. The memory of the explosive collar is heavy on her neck and she can’t focus long enough to remind herself that it is disarmed and harmless in a box at the police station. 

 

It’s something she’s never been faced with quite like this before: her own mortality. With John’s hands at her neck and Oliver’s voice in her ear, she had felt unstoppable. She had felt a sense of purpose that overwhelmed all her fear; because of  _ her _ , the team was able to take down a killer. She had ridden that high all the way through the rest of the night but here in the quiet darkness, all that is stripped away and replaced with a fear that cuts all the way through to her bones. 

 

And it’s embarrassing, it’s so completely ridiculous to be having this moment in front of Oliver, of all people. One of Felicity’s hands comes up to her throat in a sudden, jerky motion. She flattens the palm of it against the length of her neck and released a strangled breath when her fingers land on the collar of the dress she’s been wearing night. It’s expensive, all the beading ready to pull loose as soon as she yanks it away from her body like she wants to. The high neckline and tight fit hadn’t bothered her before now. At the beginning of the night, the dress had felt like an armor of sorts. She stood a little taller in it, felt less out of place in the midst of Starling’s elite. She hadn’t missed the way Oliver’s eyes had lingered on her either; even if it was only a superficial attraction, she won’t pretend it didn’t feel nice. 

 

Distantly, she hears Oliver say her name in that soft, gentle way that confuses her. Hearing him say her name like that, it makes her feel vulnerable. Like he can see right through her, or knows something she doesn’t think he should. Like all her wiring is exposed.

 

Felicity can feel the tension coming off of Oliver in waves, some unrelenting concern directed at her that she doesn’t think is warranted but can’t bring herself to dismiss. 

 

“Felicity,” he says again, low and full of some strange sense of purpose he seems to have decided her name deserves. She hates when he does that, hates the shiver it sends down her spine. He makes her name sound  _ important _ when it should hardly mean anything at all to him. 

 

Her fingers tug at the fabric near her neck and she stops herself just short of pulling it hard enough to break it. 

 

“Get it off,” she finally chokes out, swallowing the panic and hating how helpless she sounds. Oliver stills for a moment, his expression schooled into neutrality. Felicity takes his hesitance as an opportunity to try to calm herself, but the fabric of the dress presses in on her body on every inhale and the restriction leaves her lightheaded. Her hands push past her hair to the back of her neck, looking for the hook keeping it closed but she can’t focus her attention enough to find it.

 

“I need it  _ off _ ,” she snaps, panic growing with every rushed breath. “ _ Please, _ ” she adds in a low, nearly desperate voice. Tomorrow she’ll have time to be mortified over the idea of begging Oliver to help her out of her clothes. Tonight though, the fabric on her overly sensitive skin is too much contact, too overwhelming for her to think past. 

 

Without saying anything, Oliver turns away from her and opens the driver’s side door. He steps out and closes it behind him, his actions slow and deliberate. The car feels entirely too small once she is alone inside it. A strangled noise tumbles out of her mouth, sounding detached and foreign to her own ears. There isn’t much room left in her mind for logic and for several seconds that feel so much longer than they should, she’s sure Oliver has made a break for it and she doesn’t blame him for it; this isn’t his mess to clean up. 

 

She should be able to handle this herself, and remembering that only adds to her spiraling panic at her lack of control over the situation. 

 

Felicity jumps in her seat when the passenger side door opens, her nerves too raw to try and stamp down any of the fear she’s feeling, no matter how irrational she knows it to be. When she turns, the door is swung all the way open and Oliver is beside her.

 

It’s a strange sight, Starling City’s vigilante knelt beside her in the shadows of the streetlights with such a gentle concern written in his features.    
  
“Felicity,” he says her name again with that same damned importance, like it’s the only word he knows or is interested in saying. His voice pulls her attention back to him. He doesn’t wait for her to respond, reaching up to cup her shoulder and guide her to turn around so that her back is to him. “I’m unzipping it, okay?” 

 

She nods and he makes quick work of the small hook at the top of the dress, sliding the zipper halfway down her back in a swift motion. Once it’s away from her skin, Felicity lets out a rushed breath of relief. The dress stays on her shoulders but the opening takes enough of the pressure off of her chest to let her breath again. She doesn’t know how long she sits there, feeling the night air on the skin of her back and catching her breath, waiting for the haze in her head to clear. 

 

“I’ve always imagined you doing that in a different scenario,” she hears herself saying once she feels more like a person again instead of a bundle of nothing but frayed nerves. The words are out of her mouth before she can think better of it and Felicity winces at her own lack of filter. She opens her mouth to blame it on the alcohol or even the slowly subsiding panic, but Oliver cuts off her train of thought with a laugh. The sound is small and quiet, surely lost to anyone outside of the two of them, but it bubbles out of him and surprises the both of them. 

 

It’s a sound she could get used to, and with everything that’s happened today, Felicity is too exhausted to keep herself from enjoying it. But then the sound fades, getting lost in the distant sounds of traffic and music and everything that comes with being in the middle of the city at night. Felicity slumps back into the passenger seat of her car and the weight of the night creeps back in. Not so suffocating this time, but uncomfortable nonetheless. 

 

When she finally faces Oliver, she finds him watching her. Half shadowed in the streetlights, he looks softer here, less like the angry, guarded vigilante she’s become familiar with and more like the man that walked into her cubicle with a busted laptop and a bad lie, more like the man she found bleeding out in her backseat and asking for help.

 

This Oliver, he’s the one that Felicity trusts. The brooding vigilante may be the man that Starling City needs, but it’s this Oliver that she would follow into the line of fire. 

 

“I could have died tonight,” she says absently. The thought has been running loops in her head since the car stopped moving but the words feel odd and misshapen in her mouth. They don’t belong there, she knows that. This was never the kind of situation she imagined herself being in; she works with computers. Her life was supposed to be quiet and safe and definitely not involving any explosive collars or castaway archers. 

 

Even still, the realization of her own mortality isn’t accompanied by any regret. There isn’t an ounce of her that wishes she had stayed home for the night, or taken Oliver to the hospital when she found him in her backseat, or never played along with his ridiculous lies in the first place. It’s been stifled for a while, buried in a nine-to-five job stuffed inside a cubicle, but Felicity’s desire to help people in one form or another has never dissipated. Panic aside, taking down The Dodger had felt  _ good _ . Knowing that other people were kept safe because of her actions is more than enough to make all of it worth it. 

 

Oliver straightens at her words. He has leaned back to make himself more comfortable, no longer kneeling so close to her. Felicity appreciates the space, all the open air between them. His proximity has never been a negative thing but tonight she needs a chance to breathe and she’s grateful that he seems to understand that. From his perch on the curb next to the car, the low light dripping off him and making him look more peaceful than she’s ever seen him, his bristled reaction seems almost violent.

 

“I would never let that happen,” he says in a low growl, not unlike the Arrow voice. Felicity expects the rough exterior to make its reappearance then, expects him to wall himself away again, but it doesn’t happen. Instead, he meets her eyes with a resolution that seems to be begging her to believe him. 

 

It’s then that Felicity remembers one of the few things she does know about Oliver Queen, despite all the mystery he keeps himself shrouded in: he is a man who has lost a lot of people he cares about. 

 

It startles her to realize that she may have become a person he cares about. 

 

“I’m not your responsibility, Oliver.” The words come across harsher than she intends, bit out on an exhale. It’s her independent nature flaring up, sure, but Felicity also has no interest in being another thing Oliver has to feel guilty about. He has enough of that already without adding her to the list.

 

He leans back, bracing his palms on the concrete behind him, and gives her a considering look. “You’re not,” he concedes after a few long moments, giving a small nod. “But even if something like tonight happens again, I’m going to make sure you come home.”

 

His words are weighted and too much for Felicity’s tired mind to sort through in the moment. The way he’s looking at her, it’s not a look he should be giving her when they barely know one another. 

 

“How do you do this?” She asks instead, leaning forward and letting her head rest on the doorframe of the car. A part of her, larger than she’d like to admit, wants to reach out for him and pull him closer. But she’s in no position to act on that errant desire and anyways, her hands are still shaking too badly to do anything with them. Oliver sends her a curious look and she gestures vaguely to herself, to the space between them, outside of them, the whole street, the city at large. “All of this. How do you go out every night and do what you do and not fall apart like this?”

 

Oliver hums quietly and Felicity doesn’t expect an answer, not a straightforward one. After her own deflection, she allows him the avoidance. This may be not be the same Oliver she’s become accustomed to, but he is still very much that same guarded man and he does not give out information about himself easily. It doesn’t surprise her when he stands up from the curb without any further acknowledgment of her question. 

 

He holds out a hand to help her out of the car and Felicity gratefully accepts. Her whole body is drained from the events of the night so she teeters just slightly on her heels and makes her best effort to not pay attention to how Oliver’s hand tightens around hers until she finds her balance. She waits for him to let go, for him to retreat from the brief contact as he usually does, but the loss doesn’t come so quickly this time. Instead, he keeps her close for a few long moments. 

 

When he speaks, his voice is low and soft. Barely a whisper caught in the shadows. 

 

“I’ve done my fair share of falling apart.”

 

It’s a simple statement, but one drenched in more vulnerability than Felicity knows how to respond to from him. He doesn’t wait for her to, and for that she’s grateful. A moment later, he is pressing her keys into her palm and putting a comfortable amount of space between them. It’s her cue to go inside and get some sleep before her day starts early the next morning, and so she takes it. She feels his eyes on her for the few steps to her apartment door and knows he’s waiting until she makes it inside safely. 

 

“Goodnight, Oliver,” she says before turning the key to her door, loudly enough for him to hear, and allows herself a look back to find him right where she left him. She doesn’t bother asking him if he’d like to stay or how he’s getting home; she doubts he’ll be making an appearance at the Queen mansion tonight at all. She knows him better than she should, probably better than he’d like for her to, and knows the night is still far from over for him. 

 

When she looks back again just before she closes her door behind her, he is nowhere to be found. 

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: Igbtsmoak  
> tumblr: endlessummerafternoons

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [empty gold (if the morning light don't steal our souls)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14359740) by [fbismoak (midwestwind)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/midwestwind/pseuds/fbismoak)




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